AMHERST, Mass. — An epidemic of sculptural knockoffs is plaguing the art world, and, as with the
sale and production of counterfeit designer shoes and handbags, law enforcement is having a
difficult time following the trail.

Statues, wildlife figures and — in one case — a copy of the 1960 metallic collage
Flag by Jasper Johns are turning up for sale in stores, garden centers and other outlets
without the approval of the artists originally responsible for them.

American sculptors say they are losing income and spending thousands of dollars in legal
expenses trying to track and stop the knockoffs, often with little success.Many of the forgeries
are traced to foundries in Asia, while advances in digital scanning and photography are making
copycat sculptures even easier to create.

The scale of the trade in fakes isn’t easily estimated.

“There is a significant problem of knockoffs in all areas of the art world,” said Robert K.
Wittman, retired founder of the Art Crime Team for the FBI.

He cited an Interpol statistic of $6 billion in annual art-related crimes worldwide, with most
of them forgeries.Unauthorized sculpture castings are classified by the FBI and Interpol as
forgeries.

Eli Hopkins — business manager for his father, wildlife sculptor Mark — found fiberglass copies
of bronzes by his father in an arts-and-crafts store selling for one-tenth the price of the
originals, he said.

“I used to get catalogs of decorations just to look for copycats, but I just stopped after a
while,” Hopkins said. “I got too stressed out finding things and then finding out that I couldn’t
do anything to stop it.”

Through the years, he and his father, whose work has been collected by former President Bill
Clinton, have spent more than $75,000 in legal expenses, hiring lawyers to write cease-and-desist
letters, occasionally going to court and only sometimes meeting with success.

“You try to get the judge to award legal fees but that doesn’t always happen,” he said. The real
culprits, Hopkins said, are foundries in China and Thailand that produce knockoffs and that seem to
be outside the reach of the law.

The same problem happened to Jane Dedecker, a sculptor in Loveland, Colo., whose works have been
collected by TV host Kathie Lee Gifford and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others.

She first discovered unauthorized reproductions of her work 10 years ago at a garden store. One
of the sculptures looked like hers and bore her signature, but it wasn’t made by Dedecker, and the
price ($6,000) was less than one-third of the $21,000 she charged for the original version.

Dedecker and her business managers say they have identified about 30 of her sculptures that have
been reproduced by others.

On occasion, a culprit is found. In November, Brian Ramnarine, owner of the Empire Bronze Art
Foundry in Long Island, N.Y., was charged with one count of wire fraud after he tried to sell both
privately and through an international auctioneer an unauthorized copy of Johns’ 1960 metallic
collage
Flag for $11 million.

The foundry was known to Johns, who, in 1990, had brought a mold for the sculpture to the
foundry in order to create a wax cast of the piece, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in
Manhattan.

Ramnarine produced the wax cast for Johns but is accused of keeping the original mold and later
using it to manufacture the knockoff. Ramnarine pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Many foundries today don’t need a mold or a casting to re-create sculptures. Photographs of
artworks can be scanned into computers and turned into three-dimensional models from which new
molds are created.

“With the advances in 3-D scanning and other digital technologies, I suspect it is easier than
ever to duplicate work and create copies,” said DeWitt Godfrey, a professor of art at Colgate
University and an authority on unethical castings.

It was through photographs used to make digital files that Dedecker’s and Hopkins’ work was
appropriated. Dedecker recently went public with the experience on the website
bronzecopyright.com.

“I get calls all the time from sculptors, asking me, ‘What do I do?’ They figure that since it
happened to me, I’ve figured out some way of fighting back, but I never know what to tell them,”
she said. “Personally, I just try not to think about it.”

Dedecker advises artists to copyright all their work, which won’t stop people from making and
selling knockoffs but could lead — if a lawsuit ever gets to court and results in a win for the
artist — to recovering attorney fees.